


Right

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:23:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5174429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred and Hermione have a quick conversation late at night in the common room that leads them to a better understanding of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Right

Mad.

He was absolutely, irrevocably mad.

He glared at her from across the common room, her frazzled hair and her rumpled bed clothes, and wondered how on earth she had managed to drive him completely and utterly mad.

“Alright over there?”

Fred glanced over at his twin, who had a uncomfortably knowing look glinting in his eyes, and grunted. He went back to the snack box formulas they had laid out before them, but not before he glanced up just in time to catch her suspicious look over at their corner. Her eyes gleamed with the firelight she faced and her lips were pressed in a look of uncertain disapproval. He felt heat rise in his neck. To keep the nervousness at bay, or to thwart the jumble in his head that demanded he look back down, he flashed her a grin and an exaggerated wink. She wrinkled her nose at him and tucked some hair behind her ear, but not before Fred noticed some pink in her cheeks that might not have been caused by the heat of the fire.

“Fred, no flirting during working hours.”

Fred turned to face his brother and glared. “Shove off.That wasn’t flirting.”   
George raised an eyebrow. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Oh, so now winking is flirting. And I suppose that wink you gave Harry earlier was a desperate attempt to get him out of Ginny’s clutches?”

“Ah, but you see, when I wink at dear Ronnie’s friends, I don’t look flustered.”

“Flustered? Did you actually just say flustered?”

George gave him a wicked grin. “You were looking a little hot under the collar, Freddie.”

Fred snatched a quill out of George’s hand, stifling the urge to rise to the challenge because he knew it would only confirm what George had already picked up on. Not that he wasn’t already certain that George knew, or at least had some general idea. At this point, George was being courteous by not making more jokes about it. Silly, silly, Fred. You just had to like the prefect didn’t you?

“What are these?”

Fred jumped several inches out of his seat, knocking the inkwell over with his elbow. George snickered and pulled out his wand to spell away the mess. Fred turned to look up at the owner of the curious voice.

“They’re private, that’s what.”

She rolled her eyes at him and he scowled. She had an uncanny knack for leaving him without his usual clever quips and he was far too clever to be made to feel childish.   
“All right then, George, will you tell me what these are?”

George grinned at her. “And how do you know I’m not Fred?”

She cracked a small smile and Fred steeled himself. “Because Fred jumped and you didn’t.”

George laughed as Fred felt his scowl deepen. “Right, well now that you’ve had your fun terrorizing us innocent late night workers, you can go right back over to your book pile and bury that nose of yours in some—“

The chair screeched as she yanked it back. She dropped herself down in a flutter of white linen and tangled hair. “I’m not leaving till I get a look at these.”

Fred lightly slapped her reaching fingers away from the stack of formulas. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to go reaching for papers like that? You’ll make the stack you have over there jealous. It’s just not right.”

She faced him with a sharp glare and he resisted the urge to shrink away. Instead, he came back with a bright smile and leaned in ever so slightly. “Didn’t anyone teach you manners?”

She blinked and then replied with, “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think that you are in much greater need of help with manners than I am.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes.”

George let out a sudden and loud cough from the back of his throat. Fred and Hermione jumped in their seats, unaware of how close they had been growing, and sprang apart. Fred shot George a nasty look. His twin had a decidedly devious look in his eyes and he never liked being on the other end of George’s trouble-making.

“I think I’ll be heading off to bed,” George announced. He moved out of his seat with a long stretch and a yawn that sounded more like a bellow. “I’m sure you can finish this up, Fred. You can show Miss Prefect here some of the products of our genius.”

“I’m feeling rather drowsy myself—“

“Well then, night night.”

George didn’t seem to notice the glare boring into the back of his head as he slouched to the staircase and made his way up to the dormitories. He gave Fred one last salute after Hermione turned away.

“Fred, what are these?” 

Fred looked back at Hermione. She didn’t seem perturbed by George’s theatrical exit. She reached for the stack of papers and he didn’t stop her this time. He figured the sooner she got a look, the sooner she would let him leave, and the less of a chance there would be for him to do something uncharacteristically embarrassing. It was nearing the early hours of the morning and no one was left in the common rooms but the pair of them. He consoled himself with the knowledge that no one had seen him knock over the inkwell. He couldn’t remember the last time he knocked something over out of clumsiness rather than as a joke, and he resolved not to repeat the practice.

“Fred.”

“What?” He snapped out of his thinking and focused on her. She was holding one of the pieces of parchment close to her nose to decipher the twins’ messy handwriting. Hair hung in her face and she tucked it away with impatient fingers, eyes never leaving the page.

“This is brilliant.”

He must have heard her incorrectly.

“What?”

Her eyes were lit with excitement and when they flashed up to his, he gulped. “Did you both write these? You came up with the combinations? Where do you get the ingredients?”

“Well, yes. We wrote them last year. Lee has a friend that smuggles most of them in from off campus. They’re not particularly strong and if he was caught there wouldn’t be much of a problem. The rarer ones we pilfer from the potions room every once in awhile. We take turns on who gets to be lookout and who has to go in.”

“These are incredible. How did you know the combinations would be harmless? I would never have even begun to think of anything like this. I can only ever remember even reading about these herbs in—“

He stopped her with a dry look. “You aren’t the only one with access to the library, Hermione.” 

She flushed and set the papers down. “Right. I didn’t know the two of you were so…” She faded off and he watched her carefully. She turned a few deeper shades of red before she finally finished with, “dedicated.” 

“You thought we’d give these to first years without doing any research?” 

“Well, you didn’t give me any reason to believe you wouldn’t!” 

He glared. “You think we’d risk poisoning some kids—“

“No! I mean, I knew you would never, but I didn’t know you put so much thought into—“

“You realize that we have a plan? That we’ve thought this through? That we aren’t just the pair of delinquents you have us so neatly pegged as? Just because we don’t study for marks doesn’t mean we aren’t just as bright as you.”

He waited for her to snap back with another sharp comeback. Instead, she stilled and a strange look spread on her face. She watched him for a few moments in silence and finally said in a soft voice, “Right. You’re completely right.”

He blinked, not quite sure what to say now that they weren’t bantering anymore. His throat jumped and his mouth was growing drier by the second. He wasn’t sure what her sudden concession had meant and he was growing more nervous by the moment.

She cleared her throat sharply and straightened—when had they started leaning in again— resting her hands on the table. “This doesn’t mean I won’t give you a hard time for testing on first years. Researched or not, it’s simply not right.”

“I think I’d get whiplash if you did stop. Imagine that, Hermione, notorious adversary of all unprecedented progress, agreeing with me and then leaving us to our unhindered antics? It would be too much to take all at once. I’m feeling faint now just thinking about it.”

She covered a smile with her hand and leaned back in her chair. “When did you get so annoying?”

“I’ve always been annoying. You’ve only just started paying attention.”

“Who says I’m paying you attention?”

Fred grinned. “Well if you aren’t, the real question is, why not?”

Her eyes widened and he realized in a sudden rush how forward he had just been. Heat jumped up into his cheeks and he began snatching at papers in an effort to make an escape before it spread to his ears. “Sorry about that, I um—“

His hands shook as he tried to jam the cork back into the ink bottle. Long fingers took the bottle out of his hands and corked it with practiced ease. He managed a quick thanks before jumping to his feet, the chair screeching behind him as he strode towards the staircase.

“Night, night,” he said over his shoulder.

“Fred, wait.”

“I really ought to be off to bed. Early riser and all that—“

“Fred.”

He came to a halt at the foot of the staircase. He looked over his shoulder to see she had stood as well. Her hands gripped the back of her chair and her eyes were fixed on the floor between them. “It’s not that I haven’t been paying attention. I just… haven’t noticed a lot.”

His grip on the papers tightened and he was sure that by now the color of his face was clashing horribly with his hair but he just had to know— “Can you really tell me and George apart?”

Her eyes shot up to him. “Yes, of course. I’ve always been able to.”

He couldn’t stop the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Right, well, goodnight Hermione.”

She gave him a small smile. “Goodnight, Fred.”

He tramped up the stairs, trying to press the image of her in rumpled white bed robes with messy hair and gleaming eyes out of his head before it could do any real damage. He let himself into his and George’s dormitory and was met with a smug, “Have any fun down there without me?”

“Shut up,” Fred snapped.

He wasn’t about to admit that he had. At least not yet.


End file.
